


Pyrrhic Victory

by Sera_dy_Relandrant



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Peeta Mellark, F/M, Gen, Hijacked Peeta, Post-Mockingjay, Post-Series, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2682332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_dy_Relandrant/pseuds/Sera_dy_Relandrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Post Mockingjay. Peeta was rescued from the Capitol at the end of the war. After Prim's death, Katniss has no one left to be strong for… except the broken boy they send back home. Role reversal. Katniss heals, Peeta mends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the world doesn't stop

_You learn that it doesn't matter in how many pieces your heart has been broken,  
The world doesn't stop for you to fix it._

* * *

"Don't worry," Coin says. "I saved him for you."

They ask me if I want to see him. They say he's been asking about me, that he mumbles my name in his sleep. Like a prayer or a pledge. _Katniss. Katniss. Katniss._

My mother arrives in a puff of bleach and rubbing alcohol, noxious in the stale white room. Her words are small and neatly-spaced like a schoolgirl standing up for a presentation in front of the class. I say nothing. Her words echo back at her, hollow and sterile, and I count the minutes until she leaves. Five.

Plutarch, reminding me of what a sensational propo it would make. The girl on fire and the boy with the bread, reunited at last. What hope it would give the districts. _We'd be fucking toast._ His voice is too bright and vibrant, sucking all the cool air out. I curl on my side so that I do not have to see him. Dr. Aurelius tells me Gale is in Two, mopping up Peacekeepers and I suppose that's the only reason they haven't sent him up to me as well.

Haymitch is the last. I lie with my eyes closed, only half-playing dead. I take the shallowest breaths, wishing I could still them altogether but they've hooked me up to a dozen shiny tubes, they have a constant watch on me. _Not before Snow,_ I think. _The Mockingjay should be the one to fire the last shot of the war._ Haymitch doesn't ask me how I'm feeling, if I want to talk, if it hurts.

"If it were you," he says, blunt as ever, "the boy'd be here all day, everyday, as long as it took. Hell, he'd probably be sleeping outside your door." _You could live a thousand life_ _times and not deserve him_. He leaves without saying anything else, as though the sight of me, my forehead and nose just barely peeking out of the sheets, disgusts him.

I get up. I twist the singed hanks of my hair into so semblance of a braid. I slap water on my face from a basin, shuffle into a white robe hanging from a peg and the soft pair of slippers at the door. I walk, holding the walls, but I walk. A girl in the rebels' battered grey uniform, gun slung easily at her bony hip, follows me. She is only a little older than me, with a soldier's deadened eyes and an old woman's sunken cheeks. When I pause, uncertain in the gleaming white hallway, she leads me. Her hand on my elbow is gentle.

I wonder if they have cameras trained on my room, on his. I find that I do not care.

There are more guards at his door, bigger and brawnier. A circle of doctors with pens and clipboards, of course they're here.

"I'm so glad you could come." _Finally,_ he does not need to add. Dr. Aurelius, soft and round like a meringue, takes me aside for a moment. "He's not himself," he reminds me, "he doesn't say much but we can see that he gets confused. We still don't understand the extent of the damage, the experiments they conducted on him were novel and all the notes destroyed of course."

"But he'd want to see you, Soldier Everdeen," the girl at my side says shyly. I wonder if she's swallowed the lies like sugar pills, the ones we fed her from the games, the interviews, the tours, the propos. From her misty-eyed smile, I'd say so. "He says your name all the time."

They lead me to a one-way glass window and I look into a room as cool and white as mine. But his looks less like a hospital room - someone has made an effort and arranged a pot of paints on his desk, sticks of charcoal. An easel is set up in a corner, streaks of oily red and gold and orange running wild all over the painting, the colors too violent for such a room.

"Painting appears to help. He's always calmer when he can focus his mind on it."

 _Baking,_ I think. That would help. _Frosting._ Tigerlily cookies, pink and yellow flowers for cakes. But I don't say anything.

Dr. Aurelius natters on. "We will be monitoring you for your safety, not that there seems to be anything to fear. You are not his first visitor, but I believe seeing you might give us some insights into his condition."

I give a small shrug to indicate that I do not care either way. The boy in the paper robe, sitting cross-legged on his bed with a sketchpad, is not the one who was Reaped. That boy could lug a hundred pound sack of flour across the room like it was nothing. This one is all eyes and jutting bones, even the pencil too thick and heavy for his bony fingers it seems.

I push the door and shuffle inside. At first he does not look up, does not even seem to hear the door banging shut behind me. I try to reach for the words. I feel a fluttering in the hollow at the base of my throat, as though all those trapped words are ready to rise up anyway, force themselves out even if I am not ready for them. _I screamed when they said they hadn't taken you. I bit Haymitch. I was so afraid for you. There wasn't a day I didn't think about you._

But the last would be a lie. There were days his name never crossed my mind. Those days when my shallow breaths did not even stir the sheets they shrouded me in. The moment drags and drags. I speak for the first time in days, months, centuries, my voice scraped out from my raw throat, rusted from not being used so long. "Peeta."

He looks up, a tremor in his fingers as he sets down his sketchpad. In a move almost too fast to follow, he lunges across the room. And then his fingers are around my throat and my world shatters again.

* * *

 _You realize that you are your best friend,_  
_And that you can do anything, or nothing._

* * *

Somehow they cobble me up before the execution. I wonder how they expect me to shoot straight, stiffly bound up to hold my half-healed ribs in place, rising from my bed for the first time in a month only for today _._

I watch the City Circle fill up, the faces glimpsed momentarily on the enormous screens that have been set up around the mansion. I catch snatches of some I know - Gale in his uniform, straight as a soldier, his face a blank slate. Peeta, small and limp and shaking, between a pair of guards. I wonder who's idea that was. Haymitch, looking distinctly green as he squints in the sunlight. Shades his eyes and curls his fingers around the neck of an imaginary bottle.

I expected the bow to feel too large, too clumsy against my bruised body and in my unaccustomed hands but the memory is in the muscles. My hands and my eyes remember from the days when starvation was only a shot away. On the balcony, Coin does not quite rub her hands together but she still manages to look incredibly self-righteous. Picture-perfect for the moment too, her eyes and hair and suit all the same grey.

They bind Snow ten yards away from me, over his heart the rose that I had picked and Coin had probably placed herself. Gale once told me that it should be the same as shooting an animal, shooting another human being in cold blood. I had vehemently disagreed. But he was right. A squirrel would be harder.

The bow braced against me, I watch the white rose on his lapel turn red. I turn around, marching down the steps at the side of the verandah, but Haymitch catches my arm before I can slip away within the warren of rooms. "Not so fast, sweetheart," he says, his breath sour on his face. "Coin wants to see all her victors." _What, another propo?_ I think wearily but I suppose it might be quicker to just get it over with. I could shimmy out of his grip, I could run but not too fast with my body in such bad shape. They'd catch me.

She sits us down around a round table and asks us a question they must have asked seventy-six years ago. Maybe around the same table, I muse. Coin knows the value of a good symbol as well as anybody. Enobaria is the only one to say yes. Even Peeta and Annie Cresta reach far back enough in their broken minds to refuse. When Coin turns patiently to me, I stare at her and a hot, insistent part of me wants to say _yes_. But I think of Prim, of what she would say and how she would look at me, and before the tears can fill my eyes I say, "No. Never." She nods.

Afterwards Haymitch takes me aside and tells me I might as well have painted a bulls-eye on my back. I tell him no one will be able to see this one over all the others painted before it. Gale catches me before I can disappear, holds me in place by curling his hands around mine. Tells me they're sending him to One soon, that it's going to take a while. "Wait for me, Catnip?" he asks me, hope so absurd and unshielded in his eyes.

I nod and he takes that for acceptance, pressing his lips to mine before I can recoil. "I'm sorry," he whispers, his fingers reaching up to touch my face, but I am already gone. "Katniss, wait!" he shouts behind me but he doesn't know my hiding places. I curl up in a silver bathtub in a yellow-papered bathroom, my head between my knees and a day later, wake up with my neck on fire.

Dr. Aurelius wants to know what I want to do. I could stay in the Capitol, but I'd have to make a decision regarding it. I can't stay in limbo in the president's mansion forever, if I wish to stay a place will be found for me but I have to agree and sign my name to a contract. Do I want to go to Four with my mother? Perhaps I might like to go to One for a change of pace. Or Eleven...

"I want to go home."

"Katniss," he says gently. "There is nothing left of your home."

I shrug and then I clam up.

They let me go eventually, they have to. Haymitch takes me back, sets me in a rocker before the fire in my empty house. And then, satisfied that he has done all that he can for the night, he leaves to get drunk on the liquor that came with us on the hovercraft.

I find an old shawl draped over a chair, forgotten all those months ago when Gale dragged my mother and Prim out from the house. Waiting so long. I rub my fingers over the fraying edges, the diamonds knitted on the good, thick wool. The color is muted, fading and it smells of nothing but that it is a comfort. It reminds me of nothing - not her or _her_ , either.

It starts snowing. It stops snowing. The phone rings and rings and in a quickfire fit of rage, I throw it out of the window. The snow melts off the ground. Greasy Sae tells me that spring is in the air, asks me if I can smell the snowdrops. But I am mute. I will never open my mouth again because really, what else is there left to say?

Haymitch thumps over to my house and we eat a greasy, meaty broth in front of the fire. Afterwards, perhaps for a change of scenery, he slouches in the armchair and drinks moonshine from the bottle. Tells me Peeta is coming back. I don't ask but he tells me all the same. "No need for a Mockingjay now," he says reasonably, "and really what other place is there to put him in, now? They say he's cured. Of a sort."

Maybe _she's_ not hoping for anything in particular, just for matters to take their course so that she can check another thing off her lists and make it go away by forgetting about it. But somehow I find that I don't care. There are worse ways to die than with Peeta's hands around my throat. I know them all because I see them in my dreams every night.

Haymitch seems to read my thoughts the way he always does. We crack in the same way. "I used to dream about this when you were being your old pestilent self. Him snapping your neck for me." He smirks and holds up his bottle in a mock toast. "Well, this should be fun."

I don't see him for a week. For a week I lie under the sheets, my windows shut against the world and my hair leaving grease-marks on the pillows. Haymitch comes and tells me that he never pegged me for a coward. I roll on my side and pay him no attention. But then Greasy Sae prises open the windows on a day that I actually manage to fall asleep and the mockingjays wake me. She's right, spring is in the air. Snowdrops. Lavender. Crocus. I can hear her simple granddaughter singing from the kitchen. Its a love song, one that my father taught me.

The girl who strips before the mirror is not the girl who was Reaped either. Smaller and more shrunken, her flesh mottled grey and pink, white and olive. A tender tapestry of burns and scars. This is not a girl who can hunt in the forest for hours, drag her kill back and trade it in the Hob, walk back home and cook dinner and at the end of the day, brush her mother's hair, play with her sister, sing her to sleep. This is a girl who can barely walk. If she ever had a pretty face, a sparkle in her eyes that made a boy's head turn, that is gone too.

Somehow has left a pair of scissors in the bathroom cupboard, by accident or oversight I have to suppose. Or maybe they've all stopped caring at this point. I pick them up and snip. They are small and not the sharpest, it is slow-going but in the end there is only a dark fuzz where there were matted, singed hanks of hair. With my face naked and vulnerable without a curtain of hair, I see my mother in it - the eyes wide and oddly vacant, the half-parted lips murmuring secrets to herself. _Soldier Everdeen,_ I think and then I let the hot water run and let it wash away all that's left of the girl. It burns. It cauterizes.

It is noon by the time I lace my boots up and walk across the street. Someone has set him on a rocker on the porch, with a blanket over his lap. I wonder if the Capitol has paid for a housekeeper for him, as they must have Greasy Sae for me. I wonder if its someone I know, someone from the Seam or the Hob who's come back, or if its an Avox with no further use in the Capitol. Haymitch has said they haven't sent a doctor with him but that he's supposed to have therapy sessions with Dr. Aurelius over the phone.

 _Just like you,_ he'd reminded me pointedly.

He's holding a piece of paper, a pen too. I walk all the way across the street and stand before the porch steps, my hands stuffed in the pockets of my father's old jacket. I wait. He's almost vibrating as though he's ready to launch himself on me. Just like a cornered animal.

 _Once I took Prim to the forest with me,_ I want to say. _We saw a doe and her fawn. They were so beautiful and we were so still and quiet, they didn't move though they were so frightened. And then Gale shot them._

He shoves himself out of his rocker, so violently that he sends the paper and the pen flying but instead of coming at me, he flings himself all the way across the porch and snaps the screen door shut behind him. His fingers tighten till they turn white on the mosquito-net lattice of the door, his eyes huge and dark as he stares at me across the metal. Still I don't move, careful not to spook him.

"Your hair." This is the first time I hear his voice from his own lips in almost a year. It doesn't sound like Peeta at all, Peeta's voice was never so cold, so hard.

I touch my hand to the fuzz on my scalp, feeling oddly defensive. "I cut it."

His own flops into his eyes, so long that I wonder that no one thought to trim it before they sent him out of the Capitol. _Must be the new fashion then._ "Well you never were pretty," he snorts. "You only look a little more like a skinned rat now."

I turn right round, more angry than hurt now. How dare he. Even if he rushes out at me now, I have my bow and arrows. I'll take him down and I won't even feel sorry for him. The Capitol turned him into a mutt, they call it hijacking but they made him one of their own. The doctors can say he's almost cured, that he's so much better but that's not true. That thing inside Peeta's house is not my Peeta, sweet, gentle Peeta whose only fault was being too good. But instead of crawling back into my room and between my sheets, I turn right for the forest, stomping all the way.

 _I never pegged you for a coward._ Haymitch's words needle me more than they should have. What can that old drunk have to say to me that can hurt me now?

I shoot a rabbit, a pair of squirrels. Its not much, the old Katniss would count it a poor day and worry about what to eat, but its more exertion than I have seen for months. I'm too tired to be angry after skinning them and stuffing them in my game bag. So tired that I curl up on a flat, sun-warmed rock beside the lake and fall asleep. When I wake up my cheeks are cold and wet and the sky is the dark purple of larkspur.

I crawl under the fence and go back, past the empty streets. First I go to Peeta's dark house and I drop the bag with the squirrels on his porch, thumping hard on the door several times before I go away. I am almost home when I hear the scrape of a door, an arm reaching out of the darkness and taking the bag. Squirrel was always Peeta's father's favorite, his favorite. _Fry it up and it'll be real good,_ I think and I want to tell him so badly. Forget tell, I want to run across the street and march into his house, cook it for the both of us, watch him fill his empty belly with it and then tuck him in bed. Peeta is not a cook, he's a baker and I wonder if he remembers how to cook for himself, if he's eating. _Maybe this is how Haymitch feels about us. When he's coherent._

But I wait on my porch till the door clicks shut and a light turns on in a room. _Two squirrels wouldn't be enough,_ I think. Peeta needs to eat better. I'll get up early tomorrow, I think, and drift inside my own house. Without turning on the lights, I slurp up the cold bowl of greasy broth Sae has left on the counter for me and march up the stairs, already making plans. Tomorrow I'll go hunting for real.

* * *

**A/N: So I reposted this, changing it slightly. In this version Katniss doesn't meet Snow before the execution because she's in the hospital the whole time so she doesn't figure out about Gale or Coin.  
**

**I was inspired after going on a marathon of beautifully-written Everlark fanfiction and listening to the Mockingjay soundtrack - anyone else have Hanging Tree on loop? So, umm, if its not really clear - the rescue mission did happen and Annie and Jo were picked up, but Peeta was kept somewhere else so they couldn't get to him. He was rescued at the end of the war and without coming into contact with Katniss, the doctors had no idea how violent the hijacking was or how he'd react since he seemed normalish away from Katniss-triggering stimuli and of course there was no one left who'd conducted the actual experiments on him.**

**This is going to have a bit of dark!Peeta. I wrote it because I was a little frustrated at how Peeta went on being resolutely good and heroic for Katniss, even after he'd been through as much as her. So I decided to turn it around, when Peeta was too weak to take care of himself, just sort of giving up like Katniss did in the books. In this fic he can control his violent tendencies towards Katniss, just barely, but he's still bitter and confused since no one has really walked him through it like the squad in District 13 or his old friends did in the actual books. So he's suspicious and scared of her, just patched enough that he's not violent all the time to her and then sent away. So Katniss has to be Peeta for Peeta - in her own Katnissy way. I hope I didn't make anyone OOC, haven't written THG fanfiction in ages so all and any criticism is appreciated! Oh and reviews are love, of course :)  
**

**The quotes are from "After a while you learn" by Veronica Shoffstall.**


	2. the subtle difference

_After some time you learn the difference,_   
_The subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul._

* * *

I haven't been to Haymitch's house since before the Quarter Quell. The foul, festering stench that greets me tells me I haven't missed much.

"Up," I say, shoving Haymitch none too gently. Sometime in the night he's rolled off the sofa and I suppose I should be glad its only to the floor and not facedown on the glass table. I'm already hunting for a pitcher of water to throw on him when he grunts and shuffles back from my boot.

"Well if it isn't the bitch herself," he croaks. Squints up at me before sliding his eyes shut as though the sight of me this early is too painful to bear.

"The bitch is back," I agree. I thump the game-bag on the table and then kneel and loop my arms under Haymitch's armpits, trying to drag him up. Peeta was good at this.

"Brought me back a dead rat, have you?" he grumbles, sagging back on the sofa. Adds something about kitty-cats that I can't hear.

"You," I inform him, kicking a half-empty bottle viciously out of my way, "should keep pigs." I would have stomped on it, something about the sound of shattering glass in the morning would be sweet, but I don't want Haymitch to bleed to death on the carpet. Maybe some other day.

"Nah, they're too much like humans," he says seriously. "Geese are better."

"Sober up," I say. "You're taking these to Peeta."

"Boy doesn't need you to feed him. He's got someone to take care of him."

"Who?"

"Some... one." Haymitch shrugs.

"They don't seem to be doing a very good job of it," I snap. I clap my hands together right next to his ear. "I'll keep doing this until you get up and go," I tell him when he winces and curls away from me. "In fact," I say, marching to the kitchen and coming back with a pair of food-crusted pans. "I'll do _this-_ " I smash them together with an almighty bang and Haymitch's face twists like he's going to cry -"until you go over."

"I liked you better when you were playing dead," he says honestly. But he gets up, grabs a bottle from the floor along with the bag and totters outside. "Why can't you go?" he asks resentfully, shielding his face from the glare of the bright day when I follow him to the porch.

"I don't want to scare him."

"Is it him you're scared to scare or yourself?"

I shove him, practically hopping with impatience now, and he stumbles off a step. "Just go!"

"You owe me," he grumbles but he does. I watch him make his way over to Peeta's and then I go back into the kitchen. He's right, I owe him. I cook up the eggs I've brought over as well and I think they'd go good with some fried bread. Peeta would have brought it over for us if he was still, well, Peeta.

"Well?" I demand, laying out the plate of eggs for Haymitch on the table when he's finally back. "Did you see him? What'd he say?"

"Stared mostly. I told them they were from you." He scratches his head. "Asked if you hunted them."

"Squirrel was his favorite," I mumble inconsequentially.

He gives me a look. "Why don't you just go over and see him for yourself?" he says, tucking into his breakfast. "Take someone along with you if you want. And something nice, long and stabby too."

I pick up a plate and run it under the faucet. If I'm going to be here for this, I might as well do something with my hands. Lord knows there's enough to be washed here to keep me occupied for days. "I don't think he wants to see me."

"Nah," he says, looking serious for once. "I think he's curious about you."

"Do you think they made it worse in the Capitol for him?" I whisper, setting down the finished plate. "After the war, do you think they told Dr. Aurelius and the others to...?"

Haymitch shakes his head. "You didn't see him just after he knocked you out," he says.

I snort. "Like you did. You weren't even in the room."

"Yeah, well there were videotapes weren't there?" He rolls his eyes like I'm an idiot and I suppose I am. Of course there'd be tapes of it. "He exploded. He just went wild. He's different now. Wary, skittish but he's not near as bad." I nod and start on another dish. "You gonna be here all day?"

"You should get a housekeeper," I tell him sincerely. "Hazelle-"

"-probably never coming back," Haymitch snorts. "What's left for any of them here?"

"Home," I say stupidly.

"Sweetheart, if you believe that you need to go get your head fixed just like Peeta," Haymitch says earnestly. "Lord knows why they let you two scamper away and left me saddled with their mess."

I don't quite stomp out but I'm close. I slow down when I'm walking past Peeta's house but he's not out on the porch today and from the street, the house seems deserted. _Someday I'll see him,_ I think. I'll take Sae with me. I'll drag Haymitch all the way by the elbows if I have to. _Someday._

My body hurts from all the running around and hunting yesterday and today. I think about running a bath but after I've stripped down to my camisole and boxers, the sight of the cool sheets is just too tempting. They smell temptingly of the orris root Greasy Sae uses when she washes them. _Just a moment,_ I think, burying my head under a pillow and dragging the sheets up to my waist. _I'll be up in a moment..._

"Katniss. _Katniss._ "

I mumble and burrow my head deeper under the pillow, but there's an insistent hand on my shoulder. Large and warm and callused. I bolt upright and nearly throw him off the bed.

"Peeta," I mumble, rubbing my eyes but its Gale. "Oh." Then it hits me. Its _Gale_. "What are you doing here?" I squeal, dragging the sheets up over my thighs and clutching it to my stomach.

"You're talking." If he looked hurt a moment before, now he looks thunderstruck. I nod because yes, I am talking, I have been talking for a few days now. "They didn't tell me you were so much better," he breathes.

"Did you think I was still in the Capitol?" That's the only reason I can think for him not visiting me in Twelve. I've been here months and the last thing Gale said was to wait for him. Not that I ever really thought about it, or cared too much. _Coin might have lied. She would have._

"No," he says slowly. "I knew you were back." I give him a questioning look and he sighs and he looks away. "Things were difficult. I was ashamed."

"Of what?"

But he turns around, his eyes bright and hard, and takes me by the shoulders. Gently but firmly. I can tell there's so much he wants to do but he holds himself in place, so that I don't skitter away again. I think of what Haymitch told me about Peeta this morning. _Wary. Skittish._ "No one told me you were so much better," he says. "They said you wanted to come back, that there was nothing else they could do for you for the time being. That you needed time and space to heal."

_That's not an answer. That's not why you didn't come._

He runs his eyes hungrily over me and only then does he seem to notice my hair, or lack thereof. "Your-"

" _Don't._ "

"Alright. Alright." He holds up his hands in defeat. And then in a rush, almost defiantly as though he's been longing to say the words for ages but never dared, "You'd look beautiful any way."

"I look like a skinned rat." I crawl out of bed, dragging the sheets behind me like a cape. "And don't you start on that either." I'm fumbling for the light switch in the bathroom when he speaks again, his voice low and dangerous.

"Did he have something to do with your hair?"

"Haymitch?" I ask stupidly.

"No." I can almost hear him roll his eyes. "Mellark. He's back."

"He's been back a week. And no," I say. "Why would he have anything to do with my head?"

"Might have chopped it all off. Taken a pair of shears to you. Who knows what he does now?" He's behind me now. "I only heard he was back yesterday. I was so... I was so... well, I took the first hovercraft over that I could."

"He's fine," I say defensively. I begin to shut the door but he sticks his foot in and I sigh. "I really don't want to break your toe."

"The hell he is," he snaps and I almost clap my hands over my ears before remembering that's what Annie Cresta might do. Still his voice is so loud, so virulent that I only want to shut it out. "He's mad, Katniss. Rabid." He makes Peeta sound like a dog gone wild, a muttation and it makes me angry.

"And you're making me mad now," I snap. "Why are you back, Gale? I didn't ask for you. I don't want you." Suddenly I'm fighting back tears. I want things to be normal again, or as normal as they were a day ago. A normal of mumbles and shuffling and edging around things that I don't like or that scare me. Waiting, watching. Gale is too big and loud, too real to fit into my quiet, ordered world. Frustrated, I slam the bathroom door and he only just manages to pull his foot back in time.

The lights are on downstairs when I've finished washing myself. I pull my dad's old jacket over my pajamas, tugging the sleeves all the way down to hide my hands. Its as big as a tent on me and I think it'd be nice to crawl inside and hide. Nevertheless, I go downstairs to investigate. Gale is frying something in the kitchen and he turns when he sees me, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Got things for us to eat from One. Tomorrow I can go hunting."

"I already go hunting," I say defensively, even though I've only been twice. "I went today."

"That's good," he says gently, speaking down to me as though I'm a child and he's pleased. "That's very good."

"Well we need to eat," I say resentfully. And because I don't like the way he's just waltzed in and taken over everything, as though he has the right, as though he's come to save me when I don't need any saving, I fling the next words resentfully into his face. Almost like a challenge. "Me and Haymitch and Peeta. And I don't need you to go hunting for me."

He shrugs. "Well I won't be in your way then." He shoulders past me and sets the table with whatever he's brought. Fried turkey and bread. Jelly. I watch him stonily. When he's done he says, "Do you want me to clear out then?"

I'd pushed him but I didn't know it had gone so far. "Where will you stay?" I ask, not quite leaping into his arms but not throwing him out either.

"I'll find someplace."

"Don't be stupid," I say finally. "There are plenty of empty rooms here."

"I'll not stay where I'm not wanted."

"You caught me by surprise," I say defensively. "You could have asked."

He laughs. "How? By phoning?" The phone has been nesting in the bushes outside the living room window for months now and he probably knows it.

"Stay," I say, picking up a plate. "Or," I say, marching upstairs, "go. Its the same to me." The bread is too hard, even with raspberry jelly smeared all over it and over my fingers, and I think longingly of Peeta's cheese buns. They were as good as anything in the Capitol. Better, maybe, when they were hot and fresh. I don't hear Gale coming up the stairs but I don't hear the door slam vengefully behind him either so I can only assume he goes to sleep on the sofa.

That night I dream of roses, red with my sister's blood and my arrow through her heart. By dawn I am curled up in a ball, the sheets twisted around me like rope. Gale is watching me from the threshold, his fists white-knuckled and balled up. I wonder how long he's been watching me. Why he didn't wake me up.

"Do you have those every night?"

I nod and he slouches into the room, hesitant, as though I'm going to kick him out right now. He fills a glass of water for me and hovers over me uncertainly until I take it. Sighing, I finally relent and pat the spot beside me. He sits down gingerly and takes my empty glass. "Are they always about her? You were screaming her name over and over again."

"Not always." I pick at a spot on the sheets, embarrassed. "Sorry I woke you. Did you get any sleep?"

"Didn't need any." He forces a smile but it looks more like a grimace. "Soldiers are used to falling asleep on their feet anyway."

I've never been one for small talk but I'm genuinely curious now. "Are you a soldier now?"

"I guess I am."

"Shame for Plutarch," I say. "Remember how he said you had one of the most camera-ready faces he'd ever seen?"

"Yeah, I remember." He laughs. "Get some sleep, Katniss," he says gently, resting a hand on my bare knee. When I don't shove him off right away he looks relieved and adds, "I'll go hunting now, ok? Get something for us to eat."

"For Peeta and Haymitch too?"

He looks unhappy but he sighs and agrees. "For Peeta and Haymitch too. We can even have a proper feast if you want. Invite them over and everything, the works."

"No," I say, shaking him off and turning over. "I'm not that close to them." He sits on the bed for a bit, as though hoping I'll say something else but I've already spoken more in the past twenty-four hours than I have in months. In its own way, its just as exhausting as all the hunting and running about. "Hey," I say, when he gets up and the bedsprings protest. "Come back soon, ok?"

I can hear the smile in his voice. "Ok."

When I wake up again, the sky is orange. I can hear the TV playing and when I pad downstairs, I find Gale sprawled out over the sofa, eyes shut and one arm thrown over the back. There's a commercial on air, a trailer for a feature-length film that's supposed to be based on a book that was banned for years apparently. Something called Romeo and Juliet - doomed lovers. The actress has black hair and grey eyes, the actor is blonde and muscled. They're both very young-looking and I think that's no coincidence. I tap Gale on the shoulder and he starts up from his doze.

"Hey," he says, waking up just in time to catch the trailer end. He smiles. "Plutarch wanted me to star in it, dye my hair yellow. He's producing it, it'll be the first feature-length that'll air in the Capitol and the Districts at the same time."

"No kidding," I say.

"Yeah. Star-crossed lovers and all that shit."

I giggle, I can't help it, and he looks pleased with himself. "Dropped the stuff off at Peeta's and Haymitch's," he says and then bends to drag something out from under the coffee table. "Here, Haymitch said to give this to you. Said it came with Peeta but he forgot to give it to you."

Its a book, or more like a stack of handwritten pages bound loosely together and as I flick through them I want to scream in frustration. Because its by Dr. Aurelius and it might as well be called The Peeta Handbook for Dummies. "How could he have forgotten to give me this?" I almost shriek.

"Probably too soused," Gale points out reasonably.

"That idiot," I snap and flounce on the sofa, pulling my feet up to rest the book on my knees. I pull out a page at random. _Should be kept under supervision, preferably by known or old friends who can bring up past memories, unrelated to the hijacking._ Which tells me that whoever's taking care of him now, its most definitely not someone he knows.

"Katniss? I'll make dinner now, ok?"

I nod but I'm not really listening. I'm going to kill Haymitch, I should have got my hands on this book a week ago. I should have talked to Dr. Aurelius. Dropping the book for a moment I march into the garden and scrabble in the dirt till I pull out the phone. _Prim was planning to grow a herb garden here,_ I remember. _When we moved in she was so excited. Hot water on tap, whenever you wanted it. Soap that didn't scour your skin.  
_

"Maybe I'll plant a garden," I say, poring over the book at the dining table. Its thick and I have no idea what parts would be most useful or important, since I doubt Dr. Aurelius wrote it in any sequential manner. By the looks of it with all the shorthand and cryptic abbreviations that I can't get, they're just his notes for his own reference, probably put together quickly when he realized he'd have to discharge Peeta sooner than he expected.

"I could help," Gale says, in the middle of washing up.

"Some gardener you'd be," I snort.

"Well its not like you're any better with plants either," he shoots back.

 _Peeta would be,_ I think pensively. Maybe gardening would be therapeutic for him, just like painting or baking. _And it'd be out in the open where we could see him and we could start him out on small things like shovels. How dangerous can a shovel be?_ I think practically. _Gale and I could take him down easily._ Though I don't think Gale would be too keen on my plan to help Peeta. He'd get that stubborn look on his face and say I was putting myself unnecessarily in danger.

"Hey," I say, swatting him back when I realize he's crossed the kitchen and is peering over my shoulder at the book. I slam it shut but not before he's already read the paragraph I was on, the healing effects of occupational therapy. It was crammed with technical terms but it basically meant - keep his hands busy or he'll go crazy and claw his eyes out. Wasn't that what Finnick did with his ropes and his knots anyway? Keep his hands busy, keep his mind off things.

"You know," he says thoughtfully, "I never thought of Talents like that but it makes sense now. The Victor's Talents," he elaborates. "Like fashion designing for you. Get them to keep themselves busy so they don't end up sad old drunks like Haymitch who no one wants to see on TV."

Now that he puts it that way, it does make sense. The Capitol was obviously never going to hire doctors or therapists for the Victors, that'd be equal to admit they screwed them up irreparably, but it'd make sense to try to teach them how to cope, at least so that _all_ of them didn't end up hooked to morphling or liquor. Probably wouldn't be too many bidders queuing up for a piece of sloppy, shapeless addicts.

"Or just to keep them busy so they'd be too busy to cook up a rebellion," I point out practically. "I mean its not like they had to go to school or get a job or anything. And they used to air them on TV sometimes, remember? Panem Poetry with Finnick O'dair. Terrible Toddlers and how not to be terrorized by them with Cecelia from District Eight."

He laughs. "I wonder what Haymitch's Talent was."

"...probably beer tasting."

* * *

I'm sitting up at the kitchen table, rubbing my fingers over the fraying ends of my mother's shawl, when Greasy Sae comes in the next day. "Good morning," I say and she gives me an odd look. Gale is still asleep, thankfully in one of the bedrooms instead of on the sofa again.

"Morning yourself," she grunts.

"I'm going out," I say, feeling awkward. "I want to get seeds and I thought... you might know if there's anyone I could trade with."

"Seeds," she repeats blankly. "What kind?"

"Herbs, vegetables," I mumble. "Maybe flowers. I don't know." I don't know the first thing about growing plants really and Sae knows it too. We had a tiny patch of a vegetable garden behind our house in the Seam. We didn't grow much but the refuse was enough for Prim's goat and a few mouthfuls in season to add variety to our meals. That was the only thing my mother was halfway competent at it so I let her keep at it.

"You could try down where the Hob used to be," she says. "People come to trade for a bit, round noon. Makeshift stalls now but there's talk of setting up something more permanent now that the weather's clear." She busies herself cutting vegetables and then continues. "More people coming in on the trains every week, you know. Some from Twelve but there's plenty from other districts as well. There's talk of setting up a medicine factory."

"Why would anyone from the better districts come here?"

"Same reason some who should have never will, child," she says and I know she's thinking of my mother. "To forget." It wasn't just Twelve that was bombed, I think, as she prepares breakfast. It wasn't just in Twelve that people lost everything they knew, everyone they cared about.

In the end, Gale insists on coming with me. He meanders off while I trade - beans, carrots, peas, basil, basically everything that the man assures me is easy to grow - and seems to be in high spirits on the way back home. "They're setting up a marketplace," he says. "I guess I could come and help them while they're building. Not much else to do here." He glances at me for confirmation, for approval.

"Is that what you really want to do?" I shift the burlap sack filled with packets of seeds. I couldn't get flowers but I could try replanting some from the forest in the garden. Or I could just send an order along with the other supplies I can order from the Capitol, free of charge for the rest of my life apparently. The spoils of war. "Stack plywood boxes together when you could be off soldering? Would you have come back if I wasn't here?" He looks uncomfortable at that and doesn't say a thing until we reach the village again. Then he lets out a groan when I make a beeline for Peeta's house.

" _Katniss_."

There's a young woman on the porch in a sleeveless white dress and its only when I try to talk to her that I realize that she's an Avox. _Brilliant,_ I think, remembering Dr. Aurelius's book and what not to do. _Just brilliant._ "Will you tell Peeta I'm here?" I ask in a small voice. "He doesn't have to see me or talk to me. Just... let him know?"

" _Tell_ him?" Gale whispers in my ear. I blush, furious at myself, but the woman doesn't seem to mind my tactlessness. She just smiles and disappears into the house.

I circle round the house. In the backyard I drop to my knees in the dirt. It rained a few days ago, a good time to start planting, the man who'd sold me the seeds had said. With his dark skin and eyes, he looked like he was from District Eleven but I hadn't summoned up the nerve to ask though that didn't stop him chattering all the time I was there. Unasked, he started giving me advice about how much sun they needed, how often I should be turning over the soil or watering them. It made me feel uncomfortable and a little defensive, as though he wanted a reaction out of me even though he was probably just being genuinely friendly. Or maybe because he was just excited to see the Mockingjay.

Gale watches me for a while, an ungracious scowl on his face, but eventually he gets down to help me as well because really, there's nothing else to do. Periodically I glance up at the kitchen window, hoping for a face - "You know he could throw a knife from there, right? Take out an eye?" - but eventually I'm so engrossed that I stop. An hour goes by and then suddenly Gale grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me hard against him.

"Wha-?"

Peeta's watching us from the side of the house. He's in his pajamas, white with blue stripes and a hole through the knee and I think he looks just like a little boy in the distance. Immediately I drop the small shovel and hold up my hands to show him that they're empty. He has his arms wrapped around his middle, his feet bare. For a long while we just stare at each other and then I wriggle out of Gale's grip. Peeta stiffens, looks as though he's ready to dart back into the house again but I stay on my knees and force myself to speak.

"Prim wanted herbs," I say. It doesn't really matter what I say, just how I say it. _I'm not good at this,_ I think with a sudden rash of panic. I'm not good at sounding soft and sweet or gentle and caring, except maybe when I'm singing, but I don't want to chase him off now so I have to try. "She'd have planted a garden if she was here. Flowers too. She'd probably fill the rooms with flowers, every vase, every windowsill. Sometimes in summer I'd bring her some from the forest or the meadow. She liked that." I rack my brains, trying to think of something else to say, but I really am horrible at this without someone telling me what to say or threatening me or a mic in my face. "Umm..."

"Prim's dead." He wrinkles his forehead like he's trying to think of something. He holds his hand about a foot from his head. "She was this tall? Real or not real?"

"Yeah." _She was growing,_ I think. _She was almost my height._ _But she never would have been very tall._ "Real."

"She shouldn't have died."

"No," I agree. "That should have been me." Gale makes a small noise at the back of his throat but Peeta only nods solemnly, as though he agrees with me.

"Me too."

I laugh and stand up slowly, keeping my hands out where he can see them. "Can I come closer?"

He shakes his head and backs away, eyes wide and terrified. _Manic episodes filled with rage and fear,_ I remember. _Interspersed with panic and confusion._ "Ok," I say softly. "Ok. I'm leaving now." I back away from him, walking slowly and without any sudden movements. He watches me and the shaking stops. "Can I come back tomorrow?" I ask, when I'm almost at the corner. He doesn't answer me, but then I didn't think he would either. "I'm coming tomorrow," I tell him anyway. "At noon."

 _And the day after and the day after that,_ I think about hissing at Gale who's grimacing behind me. But I don't. Instead, I slowly round the corner and take a slow, deep breath when Peeta's out of eyeshot.

"Well that was painful."

"Get used to it then," I say flatly. _Peeta wouldn't give up on me,_ I think. _And I won't give up on him._ I hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I changed the last chapter and the story kind of. In this version Katniss never met Snow before the execution, because she was healing in the hospital, and so she doesn't know about Gale being behind the bombs and never shot Coin.


	3. you plant your own garden

_So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to leave you flowers._

* * *

Once a year or so, Madge's dad, Mayor Undersee would be called to the Capitol. His family would see him off at the station, smiling bravely and sweating through his best linen suit because from year to year, he never knew if he'd be allowed home back again. That was an open secret. In the end the Capitol did get him, just not in the way he'd expected - bombs, not the firing squad or the garrote.

But every year he returned home he'd bring presents for the kids. Used toys from second-hand bins that spoiled Capitol children would have looked down their surgically-altered noses at, but which were treasures beyond compare to us. Glossy flyers and catalogs tossed out for free from swanky shopping malls.

Madge and I spent hours browsing those catalogs, pressing our noses to the thick, gleaming white pages as though we could sniff out the elusive scent of the Capitol, breathe in its bounty. We didn't need the dolls and rocking ponies and miniature, remote-controlled hovercrafts they advertised - we could make up our own stories about what we'd do if we had them.

Gale lugs home our rations from the station, a sheaf of leaflets bundled under his arm. I've unearthed the phone from the bushes and am fiddling around with it when he comes back, trying to figure out which end goes where. I want to get it connected so I can talk to Dr. Aurelius again. One of the pages Gale's carrying falls to the floor and I pick it up curiously. Gale can figure out how to get the phone working. In a few minutes he'll be so frustrated with me tinkering around with it and getting nowhere that he'll just snatch it out of my hands anyway.

The leaflet is an advertisement for books. "The world keeps getting weirder and weirder," I remark. Imagine being so rich you could afford to spend your money on  _books_. To read because you wanted to, not because you had to for school. Not that Gale and I ever really read the ones we were assigned to in school - Prim usually took over my homework for me even though she was so much littler and Gale just didn't care. I dreamwalked through school and he approached it with something akin to dog-eared defiance. "Who'd ever pay for books?"

"I started reading," Gale says almost shyly as though he expects me to spark up at him. "A little in Thirteen, a little while I was in One. Kids' books mostly." When I don't screech  _Traitor_ at him as he seems to expect, he continues bravely, "It was kind of fun. Kept my mind off things at least."

In Twelve, we weren't fancy enough to have books to keep our minds off things. We had liquor. But still I ask politely, "What did you read?"

"There was this one I really liked, it had animals in it. They staged this rebellion against the farmers-"

I burst out laughing.

"No seriously, its better than it sounds! So they set up their own government in the barnyard but the pigs, since they're the smartest-"

I'm holding my side now, laughing so hard I feel I'll tear up in two. Gale looks unusually pleased with himself and I wonder if he made the story up only to see me laugh. "Haymitch once said pigs reminded him too much of humans," I say, between bursts of laughter.

"Maybe he read it too then. It used to be banned, I only read it in Thirteen." Gale taps his forehead, trying to remember the name. " _Animal Farm_. I'll see if I can get us a copy."

"Gale." I make a face at him. "You don't seriously expect me to read a book with talking animals, do you?"

"You won't even give it a shot? The pigs wear waistcoats," he tells me temptingly.

"Alright. Maybe if you can find me a copy with pictures." I liked picture books when I was a little girl and my father would read the ones the school handed out to me. They're probably the only kind of books I like, I never had a chance to find out. "Have a look at this for me, will you?" I ask, tossing him the phone.

He sits down on the sofa and cradles it like a baby bird. "Poor little thing," he coos. "Mama'll have you right in a jiffy."

I stretch lazily, bending down to touch my toes and then up until I can feel the satisfying tug of skin stretched tight around my middle. I'm getting stronger. I can run a lap around the house now without stopping and it makes me proud.

"We never had a chance to find out what we liked," I tell him, scooping up the other flyers he's brought in. "Not like the kids in the Capitol... blue nail-polish or pink. Chocolate ice-cream or strawberry."

"We were too busy trying to survive. Does that make you feel bad?"

"No," I say quickly though it does rankle. A little. Just the unfairness of it. "But I wish she had it all. Pretty dresses, sparkly paint, all the books she could ever read."

He doesn't look up, but his voice creeps cautiously to me, a little vine of hope. "Someday our children will have it all."

My own is too chipper in response, too aggressively bright to let sentimentality flourish. "I'd better start unpacking all the stuff you've got. Tell me when you're done with the phone."

"Alright." If he's disappointed, the mildness in his voice doesn't let it show.

I want to take books over to Peeta's house today - ones with pictures in them, of course - but there's nowhere I can find any now. There are none I'm interested in, in the house - the only ones it came furnished with were for decoration - and the tiny lending-library Twelve once had is now a long-forgotten dream. We could send for some from the Capitol or Thirteen of course, but it would take them days to arrive.

"We should set up a library," Gale says hopefully. "Kids should read more."

I snort. "Did they tell you that in Thirteen?"

"Yes. Nothing wrong about it though."

I sigh - when it comes to Thirteen, sometimes he can be so hopelessly blind. We find Peeta's Avox sunning herself on the porch steps. She waves to us and mimes sleeping - Peeta must be taking a nap upstairs. "Hi," I say. "Could I um, borrow some of Peeta's stuff? Paper and crayons. He won't mind, I'll return them as soon as I'm done."

I'm not the best drawer in the world - I'm probably somewhere closer to the worst and the only good thing you can say about me is that at least I color inside the lines - but my fingers are feeling antsy today. I line the crayons up like the colors of the rainbow, pressing them in place so they don't roll off the rough wooden planks. I draw like a kid again, like I did in preschool when I didn't know that the only fate open to me was the body-swallowing blackness of the mines. Triangular green trees, sunflowers reaching for the sky, a rainbow dense with color.

"That's really ugly."

Of course I've heard him. Peeta couldn't creep up on me if his life depended on it. The Avox - I really should try to find out her name, I remind myself - has her arm around him and Gale is somewhere close by so I'm not worried about leaving myself open to him.

"I don't care. Its mine," I say childishly.

The Avox draws a heart shape in the air with her fingers. She likes it. She picks up a crayon and looks at me inquisitively. I nod. She can add to my picture if she wants. Peeta is allowed to as well, but he looks too disgusted to join.

She's much better at it than me. She picks up a few shades, blue, green and violet, and begins to color in parts of the lake that I haven't filled in. They blend beautifully. "You're really good," I say, impressed.

She smiles and points to Peeta as though to indicate that  _he's_ the one who she's picked this up from. "I'm sorry I haven't asked your name yet," I say, flushing in embarrassment. "Please, what is it?"

"Her name's Cora," Peeta says harshly. "Cora Cresta."

 _Cresta?_ I think, confused. Peeta's crazy - gone crazier, I think.

"Like Annie," he says, an almost reptilian smile curling on his face as though he finds my reaction funny. "She's her cousin."

"No," I breathe but even as the Avox gives me a tiny nod, I realize that he hasn't made this up. Its cutting too close to the truth. She has the same long copper-brown hair, the same delicate, heart-shaped face.  _Nonono._ And because I don't want to believe it, because there are so many unanswered questions and they scare me because I don't want to be left in the dark like this, not again, I turn on Peeta. "You're  _enjoying_ this!"

"I am," he admits. He leans back against the wall of the house, his arms drawn around his knees, unbearably smug.

"You're so fucked up." I drop the crayons and get up. "Cora, I'm so sorry..." She gets up too and tries to make soothing sounds, no doubt to comfort me, but without a tongue they come out only as guttural rasps. Which are frankly terrifying. Her hands might be soft and gentle but I don't want them on me. I don't want anyone touching me or babying me again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

I bolt before she can touch me. I don't stop running until I'm upstairs in my own room, ripping the blankets off the bed and draping them all over me while I huddle on the floor. I'll make myself a tent and Sae can send my meals up to me...

"What the hell are you up to now?" Gale sounds more annoyed than anxious. No glasses of water or soothing pats to the knee now. "I was just getting started on the turnips-"

"She's Annie's cousin," I wail. I feel like clawing off my damp, slippery skin - it almost seems to throb from sheer terror.  _He lied. Or they lied. Someone lied. She can't be a Cresta, the Avox... nobody told me._  "Cora. The Avox. Why is she here? Why isn't she in District Four with all the other Crestas? There must be other Crestas, right? Or did they kill them all? Why is she with  _Peeta_?"

"Did Peeta tell you she was Annie Cresta's cousin?"

"Yes, but he can't be lying, she looks exactly like her-"

"I fixed the phone."

"I don't care about the stupid phone-"

His voice rises above mine, measured but commanding. "So now I'm going to call Dr. Aurelius and clear this up," he says with a note of finality. "And if Peeta's lying you can march up there and kick his sorry ass. High time he gets that whooping."

I stay crouched uncomfortably on the floor, steaming under my blankets (but feeling quite safe) while he goes down. When he's finally back again, eons later, I'm so cramped and hot from not moving that I'm not even scared anymore.

He sits down heavily on the bed, not even offering me a hand up. He knows my moods too well by now. "Its true. No, Katniss don't cover up your ears - its not going to make it any better." He steeples his fingers together, as though thinking hard. Finally he says, "I called up Dr. Aurelius and he gave me a number to call in at District Four. Cora - she used to go by Corrie - and Annie, they grew up together. Cora was a little older but they might as well have been sisters. After Annie's Games, when she refused to co-operate, Snow thought that she might benefit from a little... persuasion."

"They took Cora." I swallow down black bile, yellow vomit.

"Yeah. Not that it changed Annie - she was too broken." He shifts. "Well, long story short they couldn't send a kid they'd interviewed during the Victor's Games back like that and since Snow was-"

"Economical," I say. "Snow was always economical so he had her turned into an Avox."

"Well economical wasn't the word I was going to use." He massages his forehead. If he has a headache coming on, I can brew him feverfew tea but this isn't a headache I think. This is the sledgehammer of exhaustion. We swept their ashes into the sea, but their ghosts can still hurt us. "They dragged Cora out again when Annie was interrogated during the Purge, thinking they might as well get some more use out of her."

"It didn't work the first time they tried. Why did they think it'd work the second?"

"Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe they just wanted an excuse because they were sadistic little shits." His hand hardens into a fist. "Anyway, Annie and Peeta were tortured in the same room at times... Peeta started to get to know Cora and when he was in the hospital afterwards, she looked after him for a bit since she was used to him."

"Why didn't they send her back to Four?"

"She didn't want to go. She asked to be assigned to Peeta."

"But she must have family back there?"

He gives me a look. "So do you."

He's trying to drag my mother into this again. What am I supposed to do? Feel sorry for leaving her? Guilty?  _When hell freezes over._ "That's not the same."

"Maybe its exactly the same, Catnip."

* * *

"Miss Everdeen! How delightful of you to join our sessions once more."

"Is the phone tapped?"

"I beg your pardon?"

I sigh in frustration. "Tapped. Bugged. Uh, wormed? Is anyone listening in on us?"

"My sessions are confidential, Miss Everdeen. I take the utmost care to preserve yours in particular, considering the extenuating circumstances of your condition... however, discretion may always be advised. As far as possible."

What? "Um, right."

"You may speak freely. Within the limits of discretion."

He probably means politics by that. "First off, Cora Cresta," I say. I bite down the most acidic words and try to speak calmly, rationally. I'm not crazy, not like Peeta. "They all lied to me. Why did you let them?"

"No one lied to you, Katniss... may I call you Katniss, Miss Everdeen?"

"Sure." I tap my bare feet on the floor, my legs and soles tingling warm with restlessness. "Nobody told me who she was. That's like lying to me."  _I'm sick of being lied to._

 _"_ Miss Cresta's presence in your immediate environment was not considered hazardous to your health... but it was considered extremely beneficial to Mr Mellark's."

"He's known her for just a few months!"

"Ah but what months those were." So now he's snarking me too.

"Did you think it was a good idea for her to come here?"

A delicate pause. It tells me everything I need to know. "In consultation with my colleagues and fellow specialists, I was persuaded that it might be salutary."

"Why do you always have to use such fancy words?"

"It is my manner of speaking, Katniss. If you wish, I will attempt to shall we say, tone it down? You might also wish to peruse books to improve your vocabulary, now that you are at some liberty. Light novels, perhaps."

I bet he's been talking to Gale. "I've never been much of a reader, sorry."

"I am aware and I think that a great pity. Everyone ought to be presented with an opportunity to allow their minds to flourish. I shall handpick a few for you and Mr Mellark and Soldier Hawthorne. I hope you will enjoy them."

Does he mean he's giving me clues snuck into books? Or does he really want me to read more because he thinks I'm an ignorant cretin? "Thanks."

"My pleasure, Katniss, as always. Is there anything else on your mind that you might wish to take up?"

"Not now."

"Very well then. I am at your service at any time of day and night... and now that I see you are better restored to good humor, I shall delicately broach the subject of our therapy sessions."

 _Drat_. Of course he would - I just hadn't thought about it when I dialed him up. "Fine," I say resignedly. "Wednesday afternoons."

"On a parting note may I suggest inviting some old friends now that you are in a position to play hostess? I find that there is nothing like camaraderie, the bonhomie of music and firelight and fine wine, to restore the spirits."

"I don't have any old friends."  _Or fine wine._

"I think you will find that you do. Miss Delilah Cartwright, for a start, Miss Euphemia Trinket. You have so many more friends than you remember, Katniss. I believe they would be hurt at your negligence."

 _Yeah right._ "I'll think about it."

"I sincerely hope that you do. Enjoy your evening, Katniss." He cuts the call and I drop the phone with a clang in its cradle.

"What did he say?" Gale asks, poking his head out from the kitchen.

"Yada yada," I yawn, "and he wanted me to have a party, ugh. Call up Delly and Effie and all my other friends... like I have any left."  _Or had too many to begin with._

Instead of laughing with me, Gale actually sounds thoughtful. "That's a good idea."

"It would be if I had  _fine wine_ and  _friends_."

"Not all of us are trolls like you, Catnip. I have friends."

"Yeah well its not your house," I say rudely.

"I'm the one that does the cooking and the hunting."

I stuff my feet back into my shoes. "I'm going for a run." The house is snug and cozy, it smells deliciously of soup stirring on the hob but I want to feel the burn in my calves, the thump of my heart beating too fast.

"Are you going over to Peeta's?"

I go over every night to drop off some food at Peeta's. But of course I can't go tonight. "God no."

Gale leaves the kitchen and stands in the doorway of the living room, just before I start my stretches. "I think you should," he says seriously. "You just bolted without saying a thing this afternoon."

"Well what  _was_ there to say?" I ask hotly.

"It looked rude."

"Honestly, that was the last thing I'd care about."

"Oh c'mon, Katniss," he wheedles, rubbing my shoulder. "What would Cora think?"

"I don't give a-"

"She's not contaminated, you know."

But she is. She terrifies me because if she can be hiding here in plain sight, what else is around me that I don't know, that'll bring back the memories? "What, do you have a crush on her now?"

He rolls his eyes. "I don't have to have a crush on anyone to know how to act like a decent human being. You're acting like a kid."

"First time I've ever been allowed to."

He propels me towards the door. "Go run. And I'll be waiting here when you're back and together we're going to go over there and apologize to Cora."

"I'll just sneak into the house." There's a tree whose branches just brush my windowsill. "Or I won't come in at all." I can hide out at Haymitch's, build myself a fort of empty beer bottles.

"Aww, you're cute."

In the end, I do come back home. I jog along the perimeter of the Victor's Village, run in spurts when I can which isn't for too long. I'm not back to my old self yet. Gale is waiting for me on the porch steps, swatting mosquitoes lazily and looking up at the stars.

"I can't go," I tell him, standing with my hands on my hips. "Gale, you don't know what its like."

"I know you like running. Running away from stuff."

"Its not that," I insist. "Its just the lies. She's a lie."

"For the last time, nobody lied to you!" His voice rises in frustration but I can out-scream him if I want and I do now.

"They didn't tell me the truth either which is just as bad!" But its not just the lies, I realize. There's something about Cora Cresta that's spooked me, that I couldn't put my finger on till now - she's just like me. A girl they used, who was only in the wrong place at the wrong time. A girl who left her family. A girl with unreadable grey eyes. "Gale, I'd rather slurp up my own vomit with a straw then go see her now."

He reaches out to take my shoulder but my reflexes have always been just a little quicker than anyone else's. I lash out with my fists and send him stumbling. "Don't you  _ever_ touch me like that again. I'll break your fucking face." I move past him, take the stairs to my room three in a go and lock myself in. He taps at my door, his muffled apologies floating in but I can out-wait, I can out-fury anyone.

 _You're like an animal,_ I think. They've always called me cold, dry but I know better. That's always been a front for my own protection and my family's. My blood has always boiled too close to the surface.

I barely sleep at all, forcing myself to keep my eyes open as along as I can. This is not a night I want the nightmares to visit me again. The very act of having this control over my body brings me comfort. When the sky begins to lighten, I rip out a page from the useless phone directory on my bedside table and scrawl  _Sorry for running away_ on it. I push open the door carefully so that it doesn't creak and check in the hallway for a sleeping Gale. He's not there, thank goodness. At least he had the sense not to camp outside my room.

I tear up a few flowers indiscriminately from the hedges and muddied stems and note of peace-offering in my hand I go to Peeta's house. I leave them on the rocking chair on the porch, assured that no one will be awake at this hour.

My father never raised me to be rude.

* * *

"So you're never going back to Peeta's?"

"Nuh-uh. Not until she leaves."

"Too bad."

I'm looking over the books Dr. Aurelius sent us. Well, the covers at least. Some of them are very pretty. The doorbell rings and Gale goes to get it. Probably Haymitch, hibernation over and looking for something to eat.

"Hello Cora."

I put my head up just as Gale ushers her in. She has her hair wound in a nautilus bun again, as she had the first time I saw her. She gives me a tiny wave and I stare at her blankly. What in the name of what.

"Dr. Aurelius posted some books for Peeta and Cora as well," Gale tells me, speaking slowly as though to a toddler. "I thought she might like to see them and if there's any of ours she wants to borrow."

There's a window behind me. I could jump out of it if I wanted. But its been days since I found out about her, the panic and the uncontrollable reaction have abated. I force myself to put on a front again, to be polite. "Hi Cora."

If she finds my behavior odd, she's too well-trained to show it. Because that's what Avoxes are. Well-trained. She picks up a little book bound in night-blue felt and smiles as she rifles through it. Opens it to show me a beautiful sketch of a woman with long wavy hair and the body of a fish from the waist down.

"What's that?" I ask even though I'd made up my mind to interact as little as possible. I'm really curious because though the picture is just bizarre, its beautiful in its own way as well.

Gale squints and reads the label under it. " _"If men aren't drowned," the little mermaid asked, "do they live on forever? Don't they die, as we do down here in the sea?"_ "

Cora presses her nail under the word mermaid. She looks desperate to say something so Gale hands her a piece of paper and a pencil we have lying around.  _My mother used to tell me this story when I was little._ She looks at us curiously but Gale shakes his head.

"When we were kids we learnt about the Cinderella, the little Coal-shuttle girl," he says.

Cora makes a face and presses the book earnestly in Gale's hand. She really wants us to read it. "We will," Gale promises, smiling. "Right, Katniss?"

I give a tiny nod. "It has pictures," I say, finally relenting. And as though she's been waiting for me to give away a little, her face breaks out into the brightest smile. I suppose its meant to be reassuring. It might be, to a normal person. She just doesn't know how far back in crazyland I am. 


End file.
